


Parallels

by Slowscribe



Category: Meet the Robinsons (2007)
Genre: Analysis, Depressing, Future Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-05
Updated: 2014-06-05
Packaged: 2018-02-03 11:40:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1743398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Slowscribe/pseuds/Slowscribe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lewis thinks he knows how to reach the future he was shown, but he is nagged by details that just don't match up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Parallels

**Author's Note:**

> This is something that has been nagging at me to be written for a while, pretty much every time I watch the movie. I always think about the story spawning twin timelines, or even loads of parallel timelines, depending on Lewis reacting a little differently to the future he thinks he's supposed to have.
> 
> I'm still not sure I've captured the feeling I want, but here's my best try.

He never really feels like a ‘Cornelius.’

He asks for the name and never takes it back, but there are times even years later when he hears it and thinks they must be asking for someone else. He expected it to fit. It’s the name he’s supposed to have in the future, so it must be his.

For a long time he tries to convince himself he might grow into it.

Franny leaves to study music in Greece and they barely talk for three years. When he proposes she’s so angry he thinks she’ll never talk to him again. She knows he’s not in love with her so much as the idea of having her in his future.

Even when she’s wrong, she’s right. He knows she’s wrong, and she’s right. He knows he loves her, and she knows he’s not paying attention to her as she is here and now.

They don’t talk after that. At least, not for a few months that feel like years while he’s living them.

When they ease back into each other’s lives he knows better than to take her for granted. He loves every golden day he spends with her, every planned meeting and chance happiness. He never realized how pigheaded she could be, how petty, how playful, or how perfect. She has a dignity and charm that makes it impossible to tell she’s lost an argument, or her temper.

The more he’s with her, the more he wants to be with her. He doesn’t have to think about it until the night she fits herself into his arms as if she knows there is already a space waiting for her, and tells him she loves the idea of a future with him too.

Their families fit together like a pair of hands clasping.

His life is still not the fit he imagined. There are things he knows he saw that just don’t seem to turn out the way they should. There are inventions that never take off, others that find find ways to surprise even him. He isn’t sure what he does so that the twins never warm up to him.

Goob still needs a lot of help with the things that eat at him. He learns to help others at the same time. He can be turned to as a sympathetic ear, a trustworthy friend, a godparent. It seems like the right way to bring Goob into the family.

They don’t have a son.

He doesn’t think about what it means at first because they have a beautiful baby girl and he can’t imagine anything more perfect. He doesn’t think about it until Franny looks him in the eyes and says, “We’re not naming her ‘Wilbur.’”

Wilma loves dinosaurs and detective stories and the toys he builds for her. He could never force her to be someone who only shows up in his memory, any more than he could force her to take after him and be an inventor when that isn’t where her imagination leaps.

The family folds around her, fitting to the shape she decides for herself, and it feels like he can let go of the future he thought he had and hold on to the life he has here and now.

One night he snaps out of a deep sleep with the idea burning in his brain. He suddenly understands how it works, more clearly than when he was twelve with borrowed blueprints laid out under his nose.

It only takes him two hundred and three attempts to build the first time machine.

The cloaking mode is so he can safely use it in the past, see himself and see what changed without being observed. At least, once he decides what he needs to see without being observed.

He spends the time on calculations, trying to decide if this is a statistical anomaly or if there is a formula to tell him how far his life has skewed. He looks through his own memories, vivid as ever yet slightly out of true. Notes and observations pile up until the papers spill from his desk and Franny drags him away to hear her newest composition.

He never does go back. The time machine sits unused. His memories are filed away to make room for new ideas.

One night Will leaves the garage door unlocked.

He comes home to meet himself as he was at twelve, and realizes he somehow he stopped thinking this would happen years ago.

He should have kept notes. He remembers that moment of excitement and hope so well, but he doesn’t have the specifics written down. He should warn himself about the hats, about not ignoring Goob. He should say something about the saguaro incident and why bubble transport never really took off. He should definitely make it clear that Will will be Will no matter who she is, even if he thinks she isn’t at first.

He wonders how many tries it will take himself to build the time machine only knowing halfway how it works. He wonders if somehow this time he will remember to take each day as it comes and not try to make the future happen all at once. He wonders if this Lewis will feel more like a ‘Cornelius.’

He thinks about lives stretching out like parallel lines, never meeting but never moving away.

When Lewis asks if this will be his future he smiles and says, “If you work for it.”

But the truth is, he should have said, ‘No.’


End file.
